JP2006339851A - Information processing apparatus and program thereof - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an information processing apparatus for enhancing browsing accuracy of Web information linked to a URL address in accessory information of a digital television broadcast program even when the digital television broadcast program that is recorded and stored is reproduced. <P>SOLUTION: The information processing apparatus checks whether or not the accessory information of transport stream data of the program being received includes a URL (S402), extracts the URL information (S403) when included, and records the extracted URL information to a HDD (S404). The information processing apparatus acquires information of a Webpage linked to the URL from a Web server on the Internet (S405), and records the acquired Web information to the HDD in association with the Webpage information. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus capable of receiving, recording and reproducing digital television broadcasts, and a program thereof.

In digital television broadcasting, a large number of programs are superimposed and transmitted, and video information, audio information, and accompanying information of each program are packetized and transmitted.
In addition, digital television broadcasting has an advantage that programs of 100 channels or more can be broadcast simultaneously by using MPEG-2 image compression technology. In this case, it is troublesome for the viewer to search from a program guide using a print medium such as a newspaper or a magazine and select a channel or make a recording reservation. Therefore, as a countermeasure, data necessary for creating a program guide, such as program information, is multiplexed and broadcast on the MPEG-2 transport stream so that the viewer can search and select programs on the monitor screen. . This program guide is called EPG (Electronic Program Guide).

  An MPEG-2 transport stream may include teletext information and subtitle information in addition to EPG information as accompanying information. These are transmitted as part of PSI (Program Specific Information) or SI (Service Information) by an MPEG-2 transport stream, or are transmitted in separate packets as other accompanying information. Teletext information and subtitle information are used to display character information. The EPG information, teletext information, and subtitle information may include URL (Uniform Resource Locator) information. In this case, the URL information is displayed on the display screen together with the video information.

By the way, when URL information transmitted by the transport stream is displayed on the display screen, the user can visually grasp the information.
However, in order to access the URL displayed on the display screen, the user temporarily records the displayed URL on a memo paper or the like, or once records it as video information, and then accesses the memo or the recorded URL information via the Internet. Must be manually entered and accessed by means. For this reason, there have been problems such as erroneous reading when reading URL information from a memo or a reproduced image, or erroneous input when performing manual input. Then, accessing the URL displayed on the monitor is a troublesome work that requires a considerable amount of time for the user, and the URL information transmitted by the transport stream is effectively used less. .

To solve this problem, URL (Uniform Resource Locator) information is extracted from the transport stream, a URL address list is generated based on the extracted URL information, and the user selects an address from the list. A method has been proposed in which desired data can be accessed. (For example, refer to Patent Document 1).
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-4416

  With the method described in Patent Document 1, it is possible to simplify the operation of inputting a URL address. However, when a program is recorded and saved, the listed addresses are not updated. Therefore, when a recorded program is later played back and viewed, when browsing data on a Web site linked to a URL address included in the accompanying information of the program, the data may not be obtained due to a broken link or the like.

  Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an information processing apparatus that improves the browsing accuracy of data linked to a URL address in accompanying information of a program even when a recorded and stored digital TV broadcast program is played back. To do.

  In order to achieve the above object, an information processing apparatus of the present invention is an information processing apparatus that receives, records, and reproduces a transport stream including video information, audio information, and accompanying information of each program, from the transport stream. URL information extracting means for extracting URL (Uniform Resource Locator) information, URL information recording means for recording the extracted URL information, Internet access means for accessing the URL extracted by the URL information extracting means, and the Internet Access information recording means for recording Web information corresponding to the URL accessed by the access means.

  In addition, the information processing program of the present invention receives a transport stream including video information, audio information, and accompanying information of each program, records and reproduces it, and URL (Uniform Resource Locator) information from the transport stream. Corresponding to the URL information extracting function to extract, the URL information recording function to record the extracted URL information, the Internet access function to access the URL extracted by the URL information extracting function, and the URL accessed by this Internet access function An access information recording function for recording Web information to be recorded.

  ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, when reproducing | regenerating the recorded digital television broadcast program, the information processing apparatus which improves the browsing accuracy of the data linked with the URL address in the accompanying information of the program can be provided.

  The information processing apparatus of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a system configuration of a notebook PC (Personal Computer) 10 which is a first embodiment of the information processing apparatus of the present invention. The notebook PC 10 includes a control unit 201 that controls the overall operation, a tuner unit 202 that receives digital broadcasting, a main memory 203, and an HDD (Hard Disk Drive) that records transport stream data received from the tuner unit 202. ) 204, a graphic controller 205, an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) 206, an input device 207 including a keyboard, a mouse, a remote controller, and the like, and a network communication unit 209 that is an access interface to the Internet 208.

  The control unit 201 includes a CPU (Central Processing Unit), and controls the operation of the entire notebook PC 10. The control unit 201 executes an operating system (OS) and a video control program 210 (information processing program) that are loaded from the HDD 204 to the main memory 203, and allows the user to record the video received from the tuner unit 202 and to play back and view the video. can do.

  A tuner unit 202 selects a frequency of a transmission signal of a digital television broadcast to be received, performs OFDM demodulation, analog / digital conversion (ADC), FEC (Forward Error Correction) error correction, etc. on the intermediate frequency signal, and transport stream A data string of the format called is generated. The transport stream includes MPEG-2 Video transport packets, Audio transport packets, and accompanying information packets, and a packet of a program to be received is output. The accompanying information includes teletext information and subtitle information in addition to the EPG information, and the information may further include URL information.

The HDD 204 records the reception data of the target program output from the tuner unit 202 under the control of the video control program 210.
The communication unit 209 is an interface that connects to the Internet 208 based on an instruction to access a URL included in the accompanying information, which is input by the user via the input device 207.

  The video control program 210 is software for recording compression-encoded MPEG-2 moving image data, and decoding and reproducing the recorded data, and is executed by the control unit (CPU) 201. As shown in FIG. 2, the recording unit 301 (recording function) for recording video data on the HDD 204, the playback unit 302 (playback function) for playing back video data recorded on the HDD 204, and the recording unit 301 URL information extraction unit 303 that extracts URL information from the accompanying information of the recorded program data, URL information storage unit 304 that records the URL information extracted by URL information extraction unit 303 in HDD 204, and URL information extraction unit 303 The web access control unit 305 that accesses the Internet based on the URL extracted in step (b) and obtains web information corresponding to the URL (a page published on the web server), and the web information obtained by the web access control unit 305 Are recorded by the link information storage unit 306 and the URL information storage unit 304 that record the information in the HDD 204. The URL display unit 307 that displays a list of URL information in the HDD 204 and the Web information that searches and displays the Web information corresponding to the URL from the HDD 204 based on an instruction that specifies the URL recorded in the HDD 204 The display unit 308 is configured to be executed by the CPU as each function of the video control program 210.

  FIG. 3 shows an example of a screen when a list of URL information recorded in the HDD 204 by the URL information storage unit 304 is displayed on the LCD 206 by the Web information display unit 308. In this address list, URLs and titles included in accompanying information of recorded programs are displayed in a list.

  The recording unit 301 records the transport stream reception data from the tuner unit 202 in the HDD 204. The reproduction unit 302 reads out the recorded data recorded in the HDD 204 and reproduces and displays it on the LCD 206. The URL information extraction unit 303 extracts a URL from accompanying information of transport stream data of a recorded program. The URL information storage unit 304 causes the HDD 204 to record the URL extracted by the URL information extraction unit 303. Based on the URL extracted by the URL information extraction unit 303, the Web access control unit 305 obtains Web page information (Web information) linked to the URL from the Web server on the Internet 208 via the communication unit 209. . The link information storage unit 306 stores the Web information obtained by the Web access control unit 305 in the HDD 204 in association with the link. The URL display unit 307 displays a list of URL information recorded on the HDD 204. When a specific link is designated from the list displayed on the URL display unit, the Web information display unit 308 searches the HDD 204 for Web information corresponding to the link and displays it on the LCD 206.

Next, with respect to the notebook PC 10 according to the first embodiment of the present invention, the operation when recording a specific program will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.
First, when a specific program is specified and recording is started, the program being received is displayed on the LCD 206 (S401). Then, it is checked whether or not the URL is included in the accompanying information of the transport stream data of the program being received (S402). If the URL is included, the URL information is extracted (S403). Further, the URL information extracted in S403 is recorded in the HDD 204 (S404). Based on the URL extracted in S403, Web page information (Web information) linked to the URL is obtained from the Web server on the Internet 208 via the communication unit 209 (S405). The acquired Web information is recorded in the HDD 204 in association with the URL.

Next, an operation for reproducing a recorded program will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.
When a recorded program is designated and reproduced (S501), it is checked whether or not there is a browser activation request (S502). If there is a browser activation request, the HDD 204 determines from the accompanying information of the recorded program. A list of extracted URLs is displayed on the LCD 206 as shown in FIG. 3 (S503). When a specific URL is selected from the list and the OK button is pressed, Web information corresponding to the link is retrieved from the HDD 204 and the content is displayed on the LCD 206 (S504). When the browser is terminated (S505), playback of the recorded program continues (S506).

It should be noted that the display of the Web information by the browser and the display of the recorded program may be switched and displayed, or both of the screens may be divided and displayed.
As described above, according to the present embodiment, when recording a desired TV program, the URL information included in the accompanying information of the program is recorded, and Web information linked to the URL is automatically obtained via the Internet. Since the recorded program is viewed and played back at a later date, even if the Web information linked to the URL associated with the program is updated or deleted (broken link) on the Internet, the Web information is locally stored in the HDD 204. It is saved and can be viewed. Further, since the Web information is information at the time of recording the program, it is consistent with the recorded program content and is useful for the viewer.

The figure which shows the system configuration | structure of the information processing apparatus which concerns on 1st Example of this invention. 1 is a functional block diagram of a video control program according to a first embodiment of the present invention. The figure which shows the URL address list which concerns on 1st Example of this invention. It is an operation | movement flowchart figure of the video control program which concerns on 1st Example of this invention. It is an operation | movement flowchart figure of the video control program which concerns on 1st Example of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

10 ... Notebook PC
201 ... Control unit 202 ... Tuner unit 204 ... HDD
206 ... LCD
208 ... Internet 209 ... Communication unit 210 ... Video control program 301 ... Recording unit 302 ... Playback unit 303 ... URL information extraction unit 304 ... URL information storage unit 305 ... Web access control unit 306 ... link information storage unit 307 ... URL display unit 308 ... Web information display unit

Claims (7)

In an information processing apparatus for receiving, recording and reproducing a transport stream including video information, audio information and accompanying information of each program,
URL information extracting means for extracting URL (Uniform Resource Locator) information from the transport stream;
URL information recording means for recording the extracted URL information;
Internet access means for accessing the URL extracted by the URL information extraction means;
Access information recording means for recording Web information corresponding to the URL accessed by the Internet access means;
An information processing apparatus comprising:   The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising: means for extracting and displaying the Web information recorded by the access information recording unit based on an access instruction for the URL recorded by the URL information recording unit. An information processing apparatus characterized by that.   2. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising display means for displaying a list of URL information recorded by the URL information recording means.   The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the URL information extraction unit extracts URL information from the accompanying information. A function of receiving and recording and reproducing a transport stream including video information, audio information and accompanying information of each program;
URL information extraction function for extracting URL (Uniform Resource Locator) information from the transport stream;
A URL information recording function for recording the extracted URL information;
An Internet access function for accessing the URL extracted by the URL information extraction function;
An access information recording function for recording Web information corresponding to the URL accessed by the Internet access function;
An information processing program that causes a computer to execute.   6. The information processing program according to claim 5, further comprising a function of extracting and displaying the Web information recorded by the access information recording function based on an access instruction for the URL recorded by the URL information recording function. An information processing program characterized by that.   6. The information processing program according to claim 5, further comprising a function of displaying a list of URL information recorded by the URL information recording function.

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